Lee Wells is an artist, exhibition organizer and consultant currently living and working New York. His artwork primarily questions systems of power and control and has been exhibited internationally including the 51 st La Biennale Di Venezia, Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinatti and the Museo d'arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto. He is a co-founder and director of IFAC-arts, http://www.ifac-arts.org, an alternative exhibition and installation program for artists and curators.His artwork, projects and exhibitions have been written about by various national and international art and news publications to include: The New York Times, Art Newspaper, The Washington Post, Art in America, and Art Net.

Wells is currently a curator at large and Cinema-Scope director for Scope Art Fairs http://www.scope-art.com. In January 2006, he co-founded the video art community research portal and traveling installation [PAM] http://PerpetualArtMachine.com, with the artists Raphaele Shirley, Chris Borkowski and Aaron Miller.Wells has been participating on the Rhizome since 1998.

The John Cage Trust is moving to Bard College. "The Trust, which oversees Cage's works and performances, is to be called the John Cage Trust at Bard College effective as of its move in the spring. Previously, the Cage Trust had been housed in the Archive Building in the West Village in Manhattan; after 9/11 Kuhn and the Trust moved to Phoenix, Arizona."
Listen : John Cage - in love with another sounddocumentary film (1992)
director: miroslav sebestik

20 Years of the European Media Art Festival - the forum for Expanded
Media in Europe

The meeting point for audiences and guests from home and abroad.
Around 250 new works of media art, including world premieres, will be
presented. The festival shows film as a contemporary work of art in
cinemas and exhibitions, both performed and using multimedia.

//Exhibition
The exhibition "Final Cut" directs our view to the relationship
between media art and cinema. From 25 April to 20 May an artistic look
at the dream machine "cinema" will be given at the Kunsthalle
Dominikanerkirche. International artists will demonstrate their
fascination with cinema, but will also question the values, codes and
patterns behind the films. Works will be presented by artists such as
Paul McCarthy, Alex McQuilkin, Mischa Kuball, Klaus vom Bruch, Candice
Breitz, Mark Lewis, Christoph Girardet, Bjorn Melhus, Peter
Tscherkassky, Christoph Draeger, Clemens von Wedemeyer and Pierre
Huyghe. There will also be plenty of opportunity to participate in
talks with the artists and attend lectures on the subject.
The exhibition is funded by the Federal Cultural Foundation.

// Anniversary
A review of media art will be given by our special guests, the
director of the ZKM, Peter Weibel, Lynn Hershman, Birgit Hein of the
fur Bildende Kunste Braunschweig and Malcolm LeGrice, who
will be showing their personal selection of films.

// Cinema
Around 180 current experimental shorts, feature-length films and
videos have been selected from a total of roughly 2000 works submitted
from around the world. They range from narrative approaches to
documentary/analytical views of war events and environmental problems.
Visually walking the borderline ...

It's old news (to some), but I finally got around to playing with the Twingly blog visualizer (via 3PointD). For those who can't tell from the picture to the right or from the video at the bottom of this post, Twingly is a downloadable application that displays a rotating 3D globe that includes plotted locations of blog posts as they occur in real-time. Basically, the longer you let it run, the more you'll see where blog activity is occurring around the globe. Statistics for each country are available in the big ring circumnavigating the globe. The application is available for download here and you can even turn it into your screensaver.

Google has something similar to this at their headquarters that plots geographic search volumes on a giant globe, also, although that isn't available for public consumption. Overall, the direct marketing applications of something like this are probably pretty low, but it may provide for interestingly analysis and it's certainly an excellent graphical representation of the blogosphere.

Another great example of this is the 3DLiveStats.com application (the link appears to be down at the moment), which allows you to plot data from any external database on a giant 3D globe.

THE BFA FINE ARTS AND ART HISTORY
DEPARTMENTS AT SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS (SVA)
PRESENT DIGITAL DIVING: A CUT AND PASTE
UPDATE A PANEL DISCUSSION

Tuesday, February 27, 7pm
School of Visual Arts
209 East 23 Street
3rd-floor Amphitheater
Free and open to the public

The BFA Fine Arts and Art History Departments at School of Visual Arts (SVA) present, Digital Diving: A Cut and Paste Update, a discussion of digital culture and its impact on the visual arts and information technologies. Moderated by Suzanne Anker, chair of the BFA Fine Arts Department at SVA, the program will explore the uses and abuses of such technologies as they effect knowledge acquisition and its manipulation, new media models of the visual and altered configurations of communities. The panelists are Lauren Cornell, Joseph Nechvatal, Judith Solodkin, Bruce Wands and McKenzie Wark. The event takes place Tuesday, February 27, 7pm at School of Visual Arts, 209 East 23rd Street, New York City. Admission is free.
For more information, call 212.592.2010.
read more

This humanoid robot holds a pen in its hand and can draw an image of any person who stands in front of it.

Artist Robot by Sylvain Calinon

Created by robotic researcher Sylvain Calinon, the robot recognizes when there’s a face in its field of view, then snaps a digital photo and extracts the major characteristics of their visage. Once that’s done, the robot turns itself into an X/Y plotter, picking up an old-fashioned quill pen and gradually filling in the details of a portrait.

I think it would be really cool to set up a bunch of these in a row, creating different styles of art using ink, pastel, oils and acrylics. Sylvain, are you listening?

Now We Need Each of You To Send an Email to Ten More People to Get 250,000Signed Up at WexlerWantsHearings.com by the End of the Year.

I can guarantee that your 100,000 voices calling for impeachment hearingswill now be heard in Congress. Together, through our new Quarter MillionPerson Challenge, let's now set a new goal of 250,000 Americans signing upto demand action.

It has been just 5 days since I called for impeachment hearings forVice-President Dick Cheney and already over 100,000 people - including you -have answered that call by adding your name as an impeachment supporter atwww.WexlerWantsHearings.com<http://images.myngp.com/LinkTracker.aspx?crypt=IVi0ax2%2b6UBSinc%2fCPYaKUEFsqOTrJU9vFj23ziqy03KVZ5Y0Na8gN%2b5%2f0utWoD99mSVvOgTtpssTfwNr387EV3%2fM%2bPCmZRVMQkK8Lmztkn3GF4%2fpJ2xRg%3d%3d> . This is a truly remarkable responsethat demonstrates the power that average, everyday Americans can have whenwe come together to pursue justice and accountability.

Never mind that the national media ignored my call and rejected an op-edthat I wrote along with my Judiciary Colleagues Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL)and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI). The Netroots and citizen activists like yourselfare spreading our message and demanding action.

Quarter Million Person Challenge

Our movement continues to grow by the hour and the day. But, with the mediablackout, I need your help to grow our effort. With 100,000 supportersalready signed-up, if each of you e-mail ten of your friends (a "Chain-eyletter") about www.WexlerWantsHearings.com<http://images.myngp.com/LinkTracker.aspx?crypt=IVi0ax2%2b6UBSinc%2fCPYaKUEFsqOTrJU9vFj23ziqy03KVZ5Y0Na8gN%2b5%2f0utWoD99mSVvOgTtpssTfwNr387EV3%2fM%2bPCmZRVMQkK8Lmztkn3GF4%2fpJ2xRg%3d%3d> and the need for Cheney impeachmenthearings we will reach over a million Americans and perhaps we can reach anew goal of 250,000 signers by the end of the year!!

Join Me Thursday Night on Blog Radio to Discuss Our Next Steps

On this Thursday at 9:00 p.m. (EST) and 6:00 (PST), please join me as Iappear on live on the Internet to discuss my efforts to convince Congress tohold impeachment hearing.

WHO: Rep. Wexler will appear live on Florida Progressive Radio with hostKenneth Quinnell of the Florida Netroots Caucus, Bob Fertick ofDemocrats.com, as well as Dave Lindorf, author of "The Case forImpeachment," and David Swanson with AfterDowningStreet.org.

More on the Media Blackout

The New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, USA Today, and Boston Globehave all rejected our op ed (though the Miami Herald just put an editedversion in its "Letters to the Editor" section). We have heard from theeditors of some of these publications and they are telling us that they aregetting overwhelmed with phone calls and letters of complaint. (Well doneeverybody!)

In short - we need to keep the pressure on if this news will spread farbeyond the Netroots community.

A few days ago, Sonia Katyal, a lawyer at Fordham, emailed me the abstractand link to her paper "Semiotic Disobedience" asking me to feel free todistribute at will... so here it is [link and abstract below]. I startedreading it this morning. Sonia's assertion that " propertization offers asubsidy to particular types of expression over others" is particularlyinteresting to me, due to my scandalous activity of appropriating imagesfrom mass media and screwing them around to make paintings.>=20> Semiotic Disobedience> SONIA KATYAL <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=3D11=5375>> Fordham University School of Law> Washington University Law Review, Vol. 84, No. 2, 2006 <javascript:void(0=);>> Fordham Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 1015500 <javascript:void(0);=>>=20> Abstract: [download paper> <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3D1015500>> <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3D1015500> ]> Nearly twenty years ago, a prominent media studies professor, John Fiske> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Fiske_%28media_studies%29> , coined th=e> term "semiotic democracy" to describe a world where audiences freely and> widely engage in the use of cultural symbols in response to the forces of> media. Although Fiske originally referenced the audience's power in viewi=ng> and interpreting television narratives, today, his vision of semiotic> democracy has become perhaps the single most important ideal cited by sch=olars> who imagine a utopian relationship between law, technology, and democrati=c> culture.=20>=20> In this Article, I seek to introduce another framework to supplement Fisk=e's> important metaphor: the phenomenon of "semiotic disobedience." Three> contemporary cultural moments in the world - one corporate, one academic,= and> one artistic - call for a new understanding of the limitations and> possibilities of semiotic democracy and underline the need for a suppleme=ntary> framework.=20>=20> As public spaces have become converted into vehicles for corporate advert=ising> - ads painted onto sidewalks and into buildings, schools, and other publi=c> spaces - product placement has soared to new heights of power and subtlet=y.> And throughout, the law has generously offered near-sovereign protection =to> such symbolism through the ever-expanding vehicle of intellectual propert=y> protection. Equations between real property and intellectual property are> ubiquitous. Underlying these themes is a powerful linkage between intelle=ctual> and tangible property: as one expands, so does the other.>=20> Yet at the same time, there is another facet that is often left out of th=e> picture, involving the increasing response of artists who have chosen to> expand their activities past the boundaries of cultural dissent and into =the> boundaries of asserted illegality. For every movement toward enclosure th=at> the law facilitates, there is an opposite, underappreciated movement towa=rd> liberation from control - a moment where social activism exposes the need= for> alternative political economies of information. And yet the difference be=tween> these marketplaces of speech - one protected, one prohibited - both captu=res> and transcends the foundational differences between democracy and disobed=ience> itself.=20>=20> Just as previous discussions of civil disobedience focused on the need to> challenge existing laws by using certain types of public and private prop=erty> for expressive freedoms, today's generation seeks to alter existing> intellectual property by interrupting, appropriating, and then replacing =the> passage of information from creator to consumer. This Article suggests th=at> the phenomenon of semiotic disobedience offers a radically different vant=age> point than Fiske's original vision, one that underlines the importance of> distributive justice in intellectual property. Thus, instead of interroga=ting> the limits of First Amendment freedoms, as many scholars have already don=e, I> argue that a study of semiotic disobedience reveals an even greater need =to> study both the core boundaries between types of properties - intellectual=,> real, personal - and how propertization offers a subsidy to particular ty=pes> of expression over others.>=20> This paper won an honorable mention in the annual AALS Scholarly Papers> competition, and was profiled in the New York Times Magazine.

more on this paper via sinSign[dot]com, lowbrow semiotics:>=20> Beheading Advertising> <http://www.sinsign.com/weblog/archives/2006/10/beheading_advertising.htm=l>>=20> In an article to be published this fall [2006] in the Washington Universi=ty> Law Review, Sonia Katyal> <http://law.fordham.edu/ihtml/reg-2bioPP.ihtml?id=3D544&amp;bid=3D766> , a Fo=rdham> University law professor, coins the already-popular term "semiotic> disobedience" (a Google search today yielded 400 mentions> <http://www.google.com/search?hl=3Den&amp;q=3D%22semiotic+disobedience%22&amp=;btnG> =3DGoogle+Search> ), which can be considered (as stated on Katyal's paper) =a> modernization of John Fiske's "Semiotic Democracy.">=20> The central argument is not new but is presented in a way that enlightens= and> greatly contributes with the conversation surrounding intellectual proper=ty in> the public space, collective intelligence, and the role of artists as the> quintessential "attention economists" (extensively discussed by Richard A=.> Lanham in The Economics of Attention> <http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/468828.html> ). Talking about> finding innovation at the intersection of disciplines=E2=80=A6>=20> In Katyal's words, "the objective of semiotic disobedience is to correct =the> marketplace of speech by occupying and transforming the semiotic 'codes'> within advertising." She goes on to explain the different degrees of> disobedience, which range from vandalism to reclaiming public space.>=20> In this context, I find the work of an unknown artist that operates in th=e> Union Sq subway station (New York City) extremely interesting [read on...> <http://www.sinsign.com/weblog/archives/2006/10/beheading_advertising.htm=l> ]